HUSH, produced by Stamp Lab
Stamp Lab included four principal artists: Cheryl Coward, kt shorb, Ana-Maurine Lara, and Florinda Bryant. The collective worked collaboratively to write HUSH, an experimental theater performance. Cheryl also designed the multimedia aspects of the show that included videos, slides, and music remixes. The production featured an ensemble cast that included Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Dino Foxx, and several others.
The play was presented as part of the 2008 ArtSpark Festival in Austin, Texas, a 12-week event that combined video games, music, visual art, and theatre. Several teams competed in the festival and presented their work twice before an audience at the Off Center performance space. Stamp Lab won the competition.
Influenced by the silences of urban spaces, HUSH explored how matriarchal lineage survives in the face of isolation, distortion, confinement, and surveillance.
T.A.G., produced by Stamp Lab
T.A.G. was a short multimedia performance piece questioning the impact of transgression and gentrification within a story about shifting family values, restless youth, cranky elders, and the ghost of an AFro-future past in the form of a train depicted by Wura-Natasha Ogunji.
The women of Stamp Lab performed “T.A.G.,” an impressionistic montage. A ghost named Nina raves quietly, a strong old woman named Billy rails on social change and gentrification (“I’m a certified Negro,” she says, refusing the label “African-American”), a singing woman chugs across the stage as a train with a 3-foot beehive, and a captivating gay girl waits for the bus, eager to split town. The piece may be baffling, but it is visually arresting. — Austin Chronicle
Ogunji and Senalka McDonald, award-winning visual artists, designed costumes and set pieces for the production along with Camille DePrang.
Cheryl created a video that accompanied the performance that evoked the ghosts of a former African-American neighborhood on Austin’s west side.
T.A.G. ran during the FronteraFest Short Fringe Festival. It received great reviews and won “Best of the Week” and “Best of the West.” It was also featured as part of a showcase of performances called Edgewalkers in Austin, featuring cutting-edge performances by Stamp Lab collaborators.
Celebrated playwright Sharon Bridgforth wrote the introduction for the Edgewalkers program:
We are in for something special tonight.
A tasty Artistic treat that is herstoric in nature.
An Offering that is evidence that Austin is a great city to live in.
I am honored to say that I know these Artists.
I am ecstatic to be a Witness.The Artists on program tonight are breaking ground. They are not only Working in new forms/intersecting disciplines/bursting aesthetic boarders. These Artists have kicked past the old guard-thinking that keeps Vision marginalized and privileged. They have created their own opportunities/have re-imagined Collective Spirit/have taken control of their own destiny and Work. Through a re-shaping of space/tonight’s Artists are creating bold new ways for us all to consider making and showing Work. In this they are being of Service for us all.
Tonight is a perfect example of how art can be a vehicle of social justice. Of how community can be self-determining. Of contemporary movement building through bridging. Austin with it’s herstory of grassroots global organizing lead by Artists/women/people of color/queers….is the perfect place to nurture and hold what is being Given tonight.
You can give back by spreading the Word about your experience of tonight’s Work. By joining the Artist’s mailing lists/volunteering/donating. Through your continued Presence at events. In each moment/with every decision you make that is informed by courage and Generosity as you move your own Work and Life forward. Together/We are the Answered Prayer.
Ache.
Rock On.
Strap yo wig.
We in flight tonight….
With Joy